Review – Maria Full of Grace

So what you’re saying is that it sucks to be a drug mule, huh? Who would have thought? Pretty teen Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) hates her crummy job in a flower factory, so she quits. Unemployed and a couple months pregnant, in semi-desperation she decides to take a high-paying job as a smuggler. Overall I was somewhat disappointed by this production. Aside from a couple of too-strong-for-TV scenes, this comes across as a Spanish-language version of an Afterschool Special about the evils of the narcotics trade. A few parts are challenging to sit through, as one might expect when watching someone swallow fifty cocaine capsules or endure an international flight with a load of coke in her guts. But beyond that the story was bland, sometimes even cliché-ridden. I think the movie does what it sets out to do. I just expected a bit more. And on a somewhat irrelevant note, I can’t think about this movie without being reminded of the Weekend Update joke on Saturday Night Live reporting on a woman caught smuggling snails into the country, the punch line suggesting that she would be the subject of an upcoming movie entitled Maria Full of Snails. Mildly amusing